creative tattoo art: September 2008

Fowled Out.

Illustration for exotic bird food packaging. (Click image to view larger)

This project was a lot of fun to work on. I was commissioned to create a fun and colorful illustration of a pet owner and their exotic bird. In this case an Amazon. The product this illustration was going to be used with was an exotic pet food for birds called "Fruit Blend Flavor."

The agency in charge was going to do test marketing and if that went well I'd be doing about seven other pet food products in the same illustrative fashion.

Custom hand lettering for logo type.

Well I provided the above art to the agency and they loved it. The agency mocked up the packaging with my art and logotype and showed it to their pet food client and they also loved it.

Of course I was happy and who wouldn't be, the agency loved it, the company loved it, things were looking great. But when they test marketed it the public hated it. That's right, it totally tanked. So the agency called me and let me know that because of that the client was going in another direction, a safer direction if you will.

As an Illustrative Designer I am familiar with the normal creative speed bumps like "Design by Committee" or the heavy-handed marketing folk who fancy themselves as Art Directors. But this was a new type of experience for me. It made me wonder, would the iPod have been so cool if they let the design be dictated by test marketing it first? I doubt it.

The blind public rejection of my art hung over my head like the Sword of Damocles for a few days. I decided to show my art to a friend of mine who is a bird aficionado and he loved it. I then told him what had happened and he made a good point I hadn't considered.

"These type of bird owners are very serious types. They look for scientific formulas to keep their pets health optimal and I'd bet this was too playful, and thus in their minds, too fun to take it seriously."

Fair enough, I could at least understand that point of view. I don't have to like it though. If we let the public dictate design on everything then what's the point of being a designer? But I digress.

You can view the art larger here.

Loyal Order of Wormwood

Promotional Art for Adobe CS4 Illustrator "Loyal Order of Wormwood."

For well over 15 years I used Macromedia FreeHand. Along the way I had dabbled in Illustrator in order to convert a file or open a file etc. but never really used it from beginning to end on any project. That changed in 2006 when Adobe hired me to design a poster to promote CS2 and assumed I used Illustrator. Long story short I recognized the hand writing on the wall and switched drawing applications. You can read more about that whole story here.

Detail of Art: New song bird of proclamation.

A little over a year passed and I was using Illustrator for some projects and FreeHand for other projects. I had a hard time cutting the cord completely. That is until I installed Leopard in 2007 and FreeHand stopped working. The cord was completely severed now. I found many things frustrating in Illustrator and posted my experience on my art blog here.

Detail of Art: Vacant worms demise.

Through the magic of the intertubes my blog post some how found it's way into the inner circle of Adobe and before I knew it they were talking to me, addressing my concerns, answering questions, fixing problems and ultimately inviting me to be on their beta team for CS4. To be honest I felt like I was sleeping with the enemy, but their people behind the scenes listened and their integrity was impressive and one thing was obvious they were improving the application.

Detail of Art: Evil worm.

Today Adobe announces the launch of CS4 Illustrator and I am happy to say that it's been a great app to work with and I am proud to be one of the many artists who were part of beta testing it. I think the improvements are incredible and the the new features will no doubt make many users very happy.

Detail of Art: Inner worm and the cup of trembling.

Adobe hired me once again to create some original artwork that will be shipped with CS4 Illustrator. Anyone who buys it will be able to open up my original Ai file and see how I pulled it off using CS4. I think it's pretty cool when a large company hires you to do artwork for them and basically says "Do what ever you want." That simply doesn't happen that often. Thank you Adobe!

My artwork is titled "Loyal Order of Wormwood." The source file that ships with CS4 actually has two pages within the file. One shows the artwork below and the other tells the story behind it. If you'd like print resolution version of this art to hang up in your work area you can download a larger version here. (2.5 MB)

I hope you enjoy the art and CS4 Illustrator.

Let There Be Light.

Mother Jones Icons.

I illustrate icons all the time. I work in a variety of styles and the most recent request came from "Mother Jones Magazine." The article was all about the environment and making green choices.

Apparently "350" is a good carbon footprint number? They wanted a speedometer for this concept. Sometimes clients give me the raw information and want me to come up with the visual and other times, like this project I just draw upon their request.

The scale was to represent weighing options and the original light bulb was for smart ideas. When they asked me to draw a regular light bulb I immediately thought "That is kind of ironic since this is suppose to be a green article?" But I figured they must have a reason so I didn't bring it up with them.

I delivered the final art and a few days later the client requested a compact fluorescent bulb to replace the original one I had done. Icons are suppose to be simple and many icons still use symbolic images that technically are no longer visually accurate to current technology. For example the "Phone" icon on an iPhone, it's a classic dial up variety.

The original light bulb is one of the true classics in the world of icons, but in this context it became problematic due to the theme of the article. I've always wondered how long it'll take before old technology symbols no longer resonate with the public at large. Maybe never?

The incandescent light bulb may not be politically correct to use anymore but it'll always trump the compact fluorescent bulb when it comes to clearly communicating an idea in an iconic form.

Logo Lounge Book V

When it comes to logo design there is one brand of publication that continues to trump them all and that is the "Logo Lounge" books. Whether it be book 1, 2, 3 or 4 they are all a must-have for any designers personal reference library.

A few months back I was asked by Logo Lounge creator Bill Gardner to judge for book number 5. It was a fun process getting to review thousands of logos. A lot of time goes into reviewing each and every logo uploaded to LogoLounge.com. Each logo is looked at by multiple judges and rated using a proprietary system Logo Lounge has developed. The process is blind and completely fair. This is why the end product is of such high quality and I was honored to be part of it.

I had a total of "26" of my own logos selected for book number 5 and the designs are shown below. As with book 4 my personal favorites weren't selected? So nothing is a shoe in.

Logo design continues to be my favorite type of work and tends to be the most challenging as well. It's a graphic mystery that is only uncovered after a lot of hard work.

Note: Just incase you might be wondering, I didn't get to judge my own designs. None of the judges who submitted did. The process is very well organized and thought out. The judging in my opinion is beyond reproach and carried out with the highest integrity. This is why the final content for each book reflects the very best work being produced in our industry.

Logo Lounge 5 Logos